Until Dawn

Until Dawn was created by Supermassive Games as an interactive horror built on the motifs of slasher films like Halloween or Friday the 13th, in which a group of eight young friends spend a night at a remote mountain lodge one year after a tragic accident marred their previous visit, and must face a mysterious threat hidden in the surrounding woods. The game's key concept is the butterfly-effect mechanic - almost every decision, dialogue choice, or successfully completed quick-time event can influence which characters survive until morning, with any of the eight main characters able to die unexpectedly at any time regardless of their apparent importance to the story.

The game cannot be reloaded to undo a bad decision, so even a minor failure in reacting to a prompt remains a permanent part of the player's story, and the mechanic of holding the controller perfectly still during moments when a character is hiding can ratchet up tension more than most classic jump scares. The game hired recognizable acting talent including Hayden Panettiere and Rutger Hauer, whose motion-capture performances heightened the cinematic atmosphere of a B-movie horror with a serious undertone, while the fixed, cinematically composed camera angles evoke classic survival horrors of the nineties.

The mysterious psychiatrist Dr. Hill, who comments on the player's decisions through a metaphorical torture chamber between chapters, adds an unusual self-reflexive layer about one's own role as both viewer and participant in a horror story. Choosing between seemingly insignificant actions, such as discarding or keeping a weapon, can have unexpectedly far-reaching consequences later in the game, making replays feel almost like a detective investigation of one's own past decisions. Critics praised the tense atmosphere, humor, and ambition of the branching narrative; the game was commercially successful and inspired Supermassive to create further anthology horror titles in The Dark Pictures series.